Teaching & Learning Partnerships

The Teaching/Learning Partners program is designed to encourage faculty members to collaborate, innovate in the classrooms, share classroom practices, and reflect on their teaching. Each Teaching/Learning Partner will work to improve a particular course, with the help of their partner.

Partners will visit each other’s classrooms several times and review course documents. Partners can implement the same new strategy in their classrooms or they could help each other implement different strategies.

This program is open to all faculty (fulltime, lecturer, and associate) at IU South Bend. Partners may be in the same or different disciplines and the same or different ranks. Many types of partnerships are possible. For example, two instructors of the same course could work on a new strategy for that course, two instructors could try the same teaching strategy in two very different courses, or two instructors could help each other with different strategies for different courses.

The key elements are that it is an equal partnership and that it focuses on teaching and learning. Past partnerships have explored using PowerPoint effectively, alleviating classroom anxiety, and writing effective test questions.

UCET support for Teaching/Learning Partners includes assistance in locating a partner, assistance in locating information on teaching strategies, $50 each to spend on teaching related materials, and an end of semester panel to share outcomes with others.

Need a partner? Need more information? Contact UCET and let us know of your interests and we will help you find one.

Application: Partners should submit a single application (1 to 3 pages) to UCET that describes their collaboration plans. Applications should include:

Name, position, and department of each partner

A description of the courses that will be targeted

A description of planned activities (e.g. meetings, classroom observations) and the potential impact on student learning